Overview
Current Uses of ASN.1
Standards using ASN.1
The History of ASN.1
ASN.1, an International Standard
Overview
Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) is a formal language for abstractly describing messages to be exchanged between distributed computer systems. Previously, ASN.1 was used to write application, national and international standards. However more recently with the advent of ASN.1 software tools, ASN.1 has been used to generate programming language code that forms the core of a wide variety of messaging systems applications.
Current Uses of ASN.1
Though ASN.1 would seem to be obscure, it is actually being used right now all around you. Every call placed on a cellular telephone in North America, Europe, and Japan results in TCAP protocol messages. These messages, described using ASN.1 and encoded using one of its predefined encoding rules (e.g., Basic Encoding Rules (BER)), go flying through the air to establish the call. And when you drive along talking on your cellular telephone and go from one cell to another, ASN.1 helps transfer control of your call between cells.
Every time you place an 800-number call, ASN.1 messages are exchanged between the switching machine and the network database to route the call to the correct common carrier and local phone number to which the 800-number maps. And when you use ISDN or non-ISDN supplementary services, such as reverse charging, closed user groups, and international calling card verification, you're using encoded ASN.1 messages.
Whenever routing data is changed within Signaling System 7, the central nervous system of the telephone network, OMAP messages described in ASN.1 are utilized in carrying out the change. These are just a few of the ways ASN.1 is used every day. And it works so seamlessly and flawlessly that you probably didn't know it was there.
Oh, and there's more! The latest generation of air-ground and ground-ground protocols, employed by the Federal Aviation Administration and International Civil Aviation Organization are described in ASN.1 and encoded in PER (Packed Encoding Rules).
Companies such as Federal Express use ASN.1 and its encoding rules to track their packages. And ASN.1 is used by the electric and gas utilities to control the latest generation of substations, transformers, RTU's, and IED's. And ASN.1 is the choice of companies such as Compaq, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Sun and Xerox for defining the DPA standard interface for printer job management in the next generation of printers.
So, ASN.1 is not quite as obscure as you may have thought.
Standards Using ASN.1
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)
3GPP is a collaboration agreement that was established in December 1998 and which brings together a number of telecommunications standards bodies. The scope of 3GPP includes a 3rd Generation Mobile System based on evolved GSM core networks and the radio access technologies that they support (i.e., Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA) both Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) and Time Division Duplex (TDD) modes). 3GPP also includes the Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) (i.e. General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE)).
Signalling Sytem 7 (SS7) Protocols (part of the GSM network)
CCITT (now ITU-T) developed the Signalling System 7 (SS7) specification. SS7 is a common channel signalling system. ASN.1 is used in the following SS7 protocols:
MTP (Message Transfer Part) - defined in Q.751
TCAP (Transaction Capabilities Application Part) - defined in Q.775
MAP (Mobile Application Part) - defined in GSM 09.02
TCAP enables the deployment of advanced intelligent network services by supporting a non-circuit related information exchange between signalling points. MAP messages are sent between mobile switches and databases to support user authentication, equipment identification, and roaming.
ASN.1 is not used in the following protocol, but can be used with OSS's ECN Tools:
SCCP (Signaling Connection Control Part)
Please note that this is a partial list - more information will be added soon.
The H.323 family (VoIP Related Protocols)
H.323 is the international standard published by the ITU-T for IP Telephony, for IP-based video conferencing systems and IP-based long distance and toll-bypass. H.323 provides a foundation for audio, video, and data communications across IP-based networks, including the Internet. H.323 includes parts of H.225.0 (the Terminal/Gateway protocol stack) - RAS, Q.931, H.245 RTP/RTCP and audio/video codecs, such as the audio codecs (G.711, G.723.1, G.728, etc.) and video codecs (H.261, H.263) that compress and decompress media streams. The following protocols deal with signalling:
- RAS manages registration, admission, status.
- Q.931 manages call setup and termination.
- H.245 negotiates channel usage and capabilities.
- H.235 security and authentication.
H.323 also includes:
- H.248 (Megaco)
- H.225 - call control protocol
- H.450.1 - Generic functional protocol for the support of supplementary services in H.323
Accredited Standards Committee X9 - Financial Services
X9 - Financial Industry Standardization
X9A - Retail Electronic Standards
X9B - Check Processing
X9C - Standardization of Credit Servicing
X9D - Securities
X9E - Electronic Wholesale Funds Transfer & EDI Standards
X9F - Data & Information Security
The X.9 Financial Services (ASC X9) develops and codifies national standards for the financial industry that are defined in ASN.1. This site provides information on the family of X9 standards, covering X9 through X9F.
Manufacturing Message Specification (MMS)
The MMS specification (ISO 9506)) is an OSI application layer protocol designed for the remote control and monitoring of industrial devices such as PLCs, NCs or RCs. The protocol defines the rules of communication which include the sequencing of messages across the network, the format (or encoding) of the messages, and the interaction of the MMS layer with the other layers of the communications network. The protocol utilizes a presentation layer standard called the Abstract Syntax Notation Number One (ASN.1 - ISO 8824) to specify the format of the MMS messages.
Molecular Biology Standards
Information on Molecular Biology Standards software is available from the Institute for Biomedical Computing. The ASN.1 definitions exist in American Chemical Society CAS Chemical Exchange Format (CFX 1.0) and NCBI. NCBI (the National Center for Biotechnology Information) used ASN.1 in GenBank , a database with approximately four million DNA sequences.
Request For Comments (RFC)
The InterNIC is a cooperative activity between the National Science Foundation, Network Solutions, Inc. and AT&T, that provides information services to the Internet community. A search facility is provided using the Z39.50 Information Retrieval Protocol (which became an ANSI standard in 1988) and Wide Area Information Server (WAIS), which developed from the Z39.50 effort. Both of these standards are defined using ASN.1 and rely on the Basic Encoding Rules (BER).
RSA Public-Key Cryptography Standards
The PKCS documents are available for download free from RSA's ftp site.
PKCS #1 - RSA Encryption Standard
PKCS #3 - Diffie-Hellman Key Agreement Standard
PKCS #5 - Password-Based Encryption Standard
PKCS #6 - Extended Certificate Syntax Standard
PKCS #7 - Cryptographic Message Syntax Standard
PKCS #8 - Private-Key Information Syntax Standard
PKCS #9 - Selected Attribute Types
PKCS #10 - Certification Request Syntax Standard
Standard Security Label for Information Transfer
The Standard Security Label, Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 188, defines syntactic constructs, using ASN.1, for conveying security label information when Government sensitive but unclassified data is exchanged over computer networks, and provides label encodings for use at the OSI Application and Network Layers. The security label definition is expressed both as an abstract label syntax specification for the OSI Application Layer and an encoding optimized for use at the OSI Network Layer.
Note that related documents can be found at this site on the Computer Security Objects Register page, maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). All of these objects are defined using ASN.1.
T.120 Series Standards
T.120 - Transmission Protocols For Multimedia Data
T.121 - Generic Application Template
T.122 - Multipoint Communication Service for Audiographics Conferencing
T.123 - Protocol Stacks for Audiographic Teleconferencing
T.124 - Generic Conference Control
T.125 - Multipoint Communication Service Protocol Specification
T.126 - Multipoint Still Image and Annotation Protocol
T.127 - Multipoint Binary File Transfer
T.128 - Audio Visual Control for Multipoint Multimedia Systems
The T.120 Standards for Audiographic Teleconferencing are described and available for download as a set of ITU Recommendations from the International Multimedia Teleconferencing Consortium.
Telecommunications Management Network (TMN)
Information can be found at the Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture Consortium (TINA) site. Documents can be retrieved in PostScript format.
Both SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) and CMIP (Common Management Information Protocol) are examples of management network protocols.
The ITU-T has information on the current work involving TMN.
A free UNIX C++ implementation is available for download from University College London Computer Science Department for noncommercial use. The OSIMIS (OSI Management Information Service) Platform has been used in commercial UNIX products to provide hierarchically structured layered network management systems that conform to the TMN model.
ACSE (Association Control Service Element), and ROSE (Remote Operations Service Element) are ISO application layer standards which are used in CMIP.
Unicode Worldwide Character Standard
The Unicode Worldwide Character Standard is a system for coding 16-bit characters so that most of the world's written languages can be interchanged, processed and displayed. Information on how to order Unicode Standard, Version 2.0, as well as updates to the standard can be found at this site.
X.400 Standards - Message Handling Systems
X.400 - Message handling system and service overview
X.402 - Overall architecture
X.407 - Abstract service definition conventions
X.408 - Encoded information type conversion rules
X.411 - Message transfer system: Abstract service definition and procedures
X.413 - Message store: Abstract-service definition
X.419 - Protocol specifications
X.420 - Interpersonal messaging system
X.421 - COMFAX use of MHS
X.435 - Electronic data interchange messaging system
X.440 - Voice messaging system (Amendment 1 1995)
X.460 - Management model and architecture
The OSI X.400 standards, defined in ASN.1, provide a general purpose store and forward electronic message delivery service. MHS systems are used by governmental bodies and commercial organizations throughout the world. This site provides information on the X.400 Standards, covering the range of relevant specifications from X.400 to X.460.
X.500 Standards - The Directory
TAP3 - The Directory: Overview of concepts, models and services
X.501 - The Directory: Models
X.509 - The Directory: Authentication framework
X.511 - The Directory: Abstract service definition
X.518 - The Directory: Procedures for distributed operation
X.519 - The Directory: Protocol specifications
X.520 - The Directory: Selected attribute types
X.521 - The Directory: Selected object classes
The X.500 series is used to identify and locate systems, organizations and individuals, and to supply information about them in the context of communications services. The Directory site provides a wealth of information on the OSI X.500 Standards, and pointers to other sources of related information too numerous to list. Their reference page in Nexor, UK, will help you locate additional materials.
The History of ASN.1
A history of the ASN.1 language can be found in Prof. John Larmouth's and Olivier Dubuisson's current books .
ASN.1, an International Standard
ASN.1 and its encoding rules are themselves defined by a set of international standards. These are:
- X.680 : ITU-T Recommendation X.680 (2002) | ISO/IEC 8824-1:2002, Information Technology - Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1): Specification of Basic Notation
- X.681 : ITU-T Recommendation X.681 (2002) | ISO/IEC 8824-2:2002, Information Technology - Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1): Information Object Specification
- X.682 : ITU-T Recommendation X.682 (2002) | ISO/IEC 8824-3:2002, Information Technology - Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1): Constraint Specification
- X.683 : ITU-T Recommendation X.683 (2002) | ISO/IEC 8824-4:2002, Information Technology - Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1): Parameterization of ASN.1 Specifications
- X.690 : ITU-T Recommendation X.690 (2002) | ISO/IEC 8825-1:2002, Information Technology - ASN.1 Encoding Rules: Specification of Basic Encoding Rules (BER), Canonical Encoding Rules (CER) and Distinguished Encoding Rules (DER)
- X.691 : ITU-T Recommendation X.691 (2002) | ISO/IEC 8825-2:2002, Information Technology - ASN.1 Encoding Rules: Specification of Packed Encoding Rules (PER)
- X.692 : ITU-T Recommendation X.692 (2001) | ISO/IEC 8825-3:2001, Information Technology - ASN.1 Encoding Rules: Specification of Encoding Control Notation (ECN)
- X.693 : ITU-T Recommendation X.693 (2002) | ISO/IEC 8825-4:2002, Information Technology - ASN.1 Encoding Rules: Encoding Using XML or Basic ASN.1 Value Notation
OSS also offers ASN.1 courses that include hands on experience using the OSS compiler, an ASN.1 language forum open to anyone, and enhanced custom versions of the OSS runtimes for implementations that require faster message processing or smaller memory profiles.
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